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Disgraced carer who dragged elderly amputee across floor fails in conviction appeal

The court heard that McCreesh dragged him backwards and declared: “To f*** with this”

Paul Higgins

Yesterday at 14:00

A disgraced care home assistant who dragged a one-legged elderly man across the floor has failed today in an appeal against her conviction for ill-treating a mental health patient.

While Judge Gordon Kerr KC affirmed the conviction of Aine McCreesh on appeal, he did remove her suspended prison sentence and replaced it with a £250 fine.

In April this year, following a brief contest at Armagh Magistrates’ Court, McCreesh was convicted of a single count of ill-treating or neglecting a mental health patient on July 4, 2022, and the court heard that, as a result, she had been sacked by her employer.

Today, Judge Kerr was scathing as to how the 28-year-old, from Dobbin Hill Road, Armagh, had instructed her legal team to conduct her appeal.

Judge Kerr said the two main witnesses were cross-examined along the lines of creating a conspiracy, “allegations of bad faith and misinterpretation, all of which, in my view, was entirely unnecessary and was of limited value”.

“The basic facts are entirely and completely simple,” said Judge Kerr at Newry County Appeal Court, outlining how two of McCreesh’s former colleagues at the Hamilton Court Care Home saw her “put her arms under the armpits and shoulders of the victim and drag him backwards along the ground”.

The victim, an elderly man, suffering from dementia and who had previously had a leg amputated, regularly “bum-shuffled” his way around the home. The court heard that McCreesh dragged him backwards and declared: “To f*** with this, I’m not sitting here watching him all night.”

Judge Kerr said there were no allegations that McCreesh had struck out or been silent towards the pensioner and there was no allegation that he was caused any pain or discomfort.

Despite the lines of the cross-examination, the judge said “the fact that it occurred is not even remotely in dispute”, because, during her interviews, McCreesh herself accepts that she lifted the patient by the armpits.

Judge Kerr said, given the man was suffering from dementia, he was clearly a mental health patient, and he had heard evidence the pensioner was “allowed to roam” around the care home but had to stay within the bounds of it.

He said the man qualified as a mental health patient who was owed a duty of care, adding that the question was, given that this was someone who was an amputee, moving on his bottom, was lifting him that way and dragging him an instance of ill-treatment?

“In my view, it was,” said Judge Kerr.

Turning to sentencing, he said it was right that McCreesh had a clear record and that, as a care assistant of many years before this incident, she had been working in a very stressful environment and “doing a job that, with the best will in the world, requires people to deal with people who can cause considerable frustration”.

“No damage was caused to the injured party and it does not need a custodial sentence of any sort,” said the judge, who quashed the suspended sentence and imposed a £250 fine.